


Scraps

by Goodluckdetective (scorpiontales)



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 20:03:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9088234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiontales/pseuds/Goodluckdetective
Summary: Post season 13.Tucker goes to see what's left of Church.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Translate the binary for fun!

There’s scraps of Church. After everything. Small little pixels that contain the echoes of what used to be a fragmented AI. The UNSC doesn’t let them see the bits at first, too sure they can find some use for them. They want to squeeze whatever they can get out of Church, to make sure their tool is broken before they throw it into the dump. 

 

It takes three months for the Reds and Blues to get the scraps themselves. Part of it is because Carolina has tried to break in to retrieve him over three times, taking out any UNSC staff in her way and that’s more medical bills that the UNSC would like to pay for. Part of it is because after weeks of combing through leftover data shards and looking at fragmented code, they’ve decided that Epsilon is “useless.”

 

Tucker thinks it’s ridiculous that it took them three months to figure that out. Tucker has always know Church was useless. They could have asked him and had this whole thing done in a week.

 

What’s left is given to Carolina, though she doesn’t hold onto it long. Whatever is left of Church she doesn’t want to be around. Instead, Church is given to Caboose, who is more than happy to house what’s left of the fragment in his office (which, given that Caboose never uses it, is more just a room than anything). According to Caboose, Church is “different.” Also “blue.” Tucker isn’t sure if he means in manner or in actual color. 

 

One week after Church is placed with Caboose, Tucker actually manages to visit. He gets a babysitter for Junior (Kai coming in clutch as usual) and heads over to Caboose’s place. They were given small houses on Chorus to live in after everything, and Caboose’s is maybe five minutes away by warthog. Caboose is out, doing electronic repair for the some News, but Tucker has a key. As soon as he walks inside, he’s promptly tackled by Freckles, who was put in a droid robot when the UNSC arrived. It takes five minutes to convince the AI he’s not an intruder. 

 

The place where Church is stored is open. There isn’t much furniture in there besides a desk and a what looks to be some crazy ass computing shit Caboose put together. The walls are painted bright blue, splotches of it on the carpet in some places. Tucker heads to the desk and looks at the monitor. On it is a sticky note with a smiley face drawn under some text.

 

“Press button to talk to Church!” 

 

Tucker wonders if Caboose has allowed other folks over that he felt the need to leave instructions. He considers sitting down in the chair then thinks better of it, just turning the monitor on. It flickers to life, screen pitch black. Only seconds later does code appear. Lines upon lines of blue code that runs up and down the screen, glitching in some places. 

 

“Church?” Tucker watches as the code flickers then scrolls some more. Random numbers in binary appear, along with other bits Tucker can’t recognize. Though there are speakers, there is no audio. It’s almost impossible to read with how fast it flashes.

 

_ 01100010 01100101 01110100 01110100 01100101 01110010 00100000 01100100 01100101 01100001 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01101110 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100100 _

 

“Ah fuck. Really. Binary? You know I can’t read that dude.” The screen flashes again, the old code disappearing. Next text appears in its place, a dim red in color. 

 

_ 01110011 01101000 01101111 01110101 01101100 01100100 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01110111 01100101 00100000 01100001 01110011 01110000 01101001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100010 01100101 01110100 01110100 01100101 01110010 00101100 00100000 01101101 01100001 01101001 01101110 01100101 00111111 _

 

“Like really man, you aren’t going to make me haul out a translator, are you?” Another flash, this code yellow.

 

_ 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100100 01101001 01110010 01100101 01100011 01110100 01101111 01110010 00100000 01110011 01100011 01100001 01110010 01100101 01110011 00100000 01101101 01100101 _

 

Tucker digs into his pocket anyway, and pulls out his com. Typing in all the numbers is hard and before he can get them all down, they’re gone. “Dude, you’re gonna have to keep those messages up longer if you want me to read them-”

 

He knows he’s stalling. He talked to Simmons after he came to visit Church: he knows what disturbed Carolina so. Epsilon was there but he was shredded, just bits and pieces of memory. Flashes of something that once was.

 

“It’s like shaking a Church 8-ball,” Simmons said one night over drinks. “Just random bits and pieces. Sarge makes more sense.”

 

“I make as much sense as a geese riding a firecracker on Pappy’s farm!”

 

“Exactly.”

 

Tucker puts his hands in his pockets. Is this what Caboose has been doing; talking to code? Sounds like him. He looks around, like he’s checking to make sure no one is watching.

 

“Do you remember me?”

 

A flash. Code, this time purple. 

 

_ 01101001 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01100110 01100101 01100001 01110011 01110100 00100000 01101111 01101110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01101111 01110010 01100111 01100001 01101110 01110011 _

 

Tucker only manages to type in the first bit into his translator. “ _ i will feast” _ does not sound like Church at all. Gibberish. Just like Simmons said.

 

“Fuck you, man. You go to all this effort to save my ass and you won’t even talk to me.” No code appears this time and Tucker puts away his phone. He turns like he’s about to leave before letting out a sigh. “Junior says hi. I’ll be back next week.”

 

When he leaves, shutting the door behind him, he forgets to turn off the monitor. There is a pause before more code appears a brilliant blue.

 

_ 01101001 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101100 01100101 01100001 01110011 01110100 _


End file.
